SEAS Newsletter

Week of October 26 – November 1, 2009

Faculty News

RESEARCH:
Prof. Poorvi Vora (CS) has received a new research grant for almost $200,000 from the National Science Foundation. The grant will fund exploratory research on "Electronic End-to-End Independently Verifiable (E2E) Voting Systems." The project will study the properties of auditing technology, which can be used by voters to independently verify the correctness of an election outcome. The grant will provide support for one post-doctoral researcher for two years.

PAPERS:
Prof. Jonathan Deason (EMSE) recently had a paper published in the international journal Management of Environmental Quality. The paper is entitled “Restoring Contaminated Urban Rivers Using an Intergovernmental, Public-Private Approach,” and it appears in Vol. 20, Issue 6 (pp. 649-657) of the journal.

Profs. Shahram Sarkani and Tom Mazzuchi (EMSE) have had two papers published with their former doctoral students Mike Flynn, now an assistant professor at National Defense University, and Richard Millar, now an assistant professor at the Naval Post Graduate School. The papers are: 1) M. Flynn, S. Sarkani, and T. A. Mazzuchi. “Regression analysis of automatic measurement systems.” IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation & Measurement, Vol. 58, No. 10, 2009, pp 3373-3379; and 2) D. Millar, T. A. Mazzuchi, and S. Sarkani. "Non-parametric statistical analysis of the reliability of a naval aviation propulsion system." Naval Engineers Journal, Vol. 121, Issue 2, 2009, pp. 111-123.

Robert Waters, professor emeritus (EMSE), contributed a paper to the Founders Issue of the Engineering Management Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Sept. 2009) pp. 43-45. The title of the paper is “From the ILWU to GWU over 50 Years.” Prof. Waters also represented EMSE at the 30th National Conference of the American Society for Engineering Management in Springfield, MO, October 13th – 17th.

CONFERENCES & PRESENTATIONS:
Working in collaboration with colleagues from the Center for Automotive Research at Ohio State University, Prof. Azim Eskandarian (CEE) organized four invited technical sessions for the ASME’s Dynamic Systems and Control (DSC) 2009 Conference in Hollywood, CA, held October 12th – 14th. The sessions include: 1) Engine Control and Identification, which he also chaired; 2) Advanced Powertrain Control and Ground Vehicle Dynamics, which he co-chaired; 3) Modeling and Control of Vehicle Dynamics; and 4) Control, Optimization and Identification of Advanced Automotive Systems.

On October 19th, Prof. Michael Stankosky (EMSE) was a moderator of a panel, Trustworthy E-ID Services in a Digital World, at the Global Forum 2009, in Bucharest, Romania. The theme of the Forum, hosted by the president of Romania, was “Information Communication Technologies (ICT) & the Future of the Internet.” Attendees included people from all over the world who are leaders in industry, government, and international organizations.

Prof. Poorvi Vora (CS) presented a lecture on "E2E Voting Systems in the Context of Desirable Properties of Voting Systems" at the NIST-sponsored End-to-End Voting Systems Workshop, held at the Marvin Center on October 13th and 14th. This lecture provided motivation for the key topics explored at the workshop: definitions of desirable voting system properties, the interplay between usability and security, and the security of voting systems that do not use paper. Also at the workshop, her graduated doctoral student, Stefan Popoveniuc, presented joint work with David Chaum and Prof. Vora. The paper was entitled "eTegrity and ePunchScan," and it described electronic versions of paper-ballot voting systems Scantegrity and Punchscan.

OTHER NEWS:

On October 17th, Prof. Julie Ryan (EMSE) participated in a special program for high school girls called "Infinite Options: Women in Math." This program was hosted by the College of Southern Maryland. The purpose of the program was to introduce girls in grades 8 through 12 to career options and to give them the opportunity to interact with professional women. Prof. Ryan gave a presentation on cybersecurity and participated in a round table Q&A session with the girls.

Other News

Siamak Riahi, a CEE doctoral student, presented “Development of tools for smoke residue and deposition analysis,” a paper that he co-authored with Craig Beyler of Hughes Associates, Judith Hartman of the United States Naval Academy, and Prof. Kim Roddis (CEE), at the 2009 Fall Technical Meeting, Eastern States Sections of the Combustion Institute, University of Maryland. The meeting was held October 19th.

Adil Caner Sener presented a joint paper, co-authored with Prof. Johan Rene van Dorp (EMSE) and Jesse Dylan Keith, at the Geothermal Resources Council meeting held in Reno, NV, from October 4th – 7th. The paper is entitled "Perspectives on the Economics of Geothermal Power," and was published in GRC Transactions, 33, pp. 29-36. Adil Caner Sener recently successfully defended his dissertation "Uncertainty Analysis of Geothermal Energy Economics" with Prof. van Dorp serving as his dissertation advisor. A copy of the proceedings paper above can be downloaded from: http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~dorpjr/Publications/ConferenceProceedings/GRC2009.pdf.

SEAS and Prof. Rhys Price Jones would appreciate any help from student, faculty, or staff volunteers in coordinating and running the local regional programming contest for ACM (The Association for Computing Machinery) that GW will host on Saturday, November 7th. All volunteers and team members will be entitled to one-year free memberships in ACM, as well as freely participating in the food and drink provided on the day of the contest. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact Prof. Price Jones at rhyspj@gwu.edu.

Guest Vignette

Storms of electrical activity and sudden cardiac death
Tim Russert, the longtime host of NBC’s “Meet the Press”, died of sudden cardiac death on June 13, 2008. His death was caused by a blockage in one of his main coronary arteries. Although he had been diagnosed with asymptomatic coronary artery disease, his doctors were not able to predict his heart attack and he was not experiencing negative effects prior to his death. Even with recent advances in cardiology and medical imaging, doctors are still not able to predict heart attacks or determine whether a heart attack will be deadly. Sudden cardiac death is not a direct result of a heart attack; it is caused by a “storm” of electrical activity in the heart that originates from the area of the heart affected by the blocked coronary artery.

Matthew Kay and his graduate students have been studying the origins of these electrical storms, which are called “rotors”. One of the primary goals of his research has been to develop new instrumentation to measure coronary flow, cardiac metabolism, and cardiac electrical activity during a heart attack. The approach is to use multiple modes of live-tissue fluorescence imaging and arrays of small electrodes to record local changes in cardiac physiology while precisely controlling coronary flow rates using low-flow precision pumps. Data streams are synchronously acquired so that electrical events occurring within a millisecond can be interpreted using the corresponding measurements of metabolism and flow rates. The importance of this approach is that local physiologic events can be recorded immediately before, during, and after the initiation of an electrical rotor. The results of this work have shown how reduced cardiac metabolism (caused by a coronary occlusion), in combination with increased electrical firing of a specific type of cardiac cell (Purkinje cells), causes deadly storms of electrical activity. Ultimately, this new information could be used to develop anti-arrhythmia therapies for patients suffering from coronary artery disease and, hopefully, reduce the incidence of unpredictable electrical storms and sudden cardiac death.

In this project, Dr. Kay collaborates with Narine Sarvazyan, PhD (Dept of Pharmacology and Physiology), Vesna Zderic, PhD (Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering), and Marco Mercader, MD (GW Medical Faculty Associates). (Provided courtesy of Prof. Matthew Kay of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering)

Upcoming Events

CS Colloquium: Smart Homes: Making Sense
October 26th
4:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
More info . . .

GW Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management Forum: Risk and Crisis Communication: From Research Findings to Practical Application
October 27th
4:00 – 6:00 pm
101 Marvin Center
More info . . .

ECE Colloquium: Optical Backbone Networks
October 29th
2:00 – 3:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
More info . . .

CS Colloquium: Negotiations between Intelligent Agents: An exploration into the benefits of cooperation and the costs of competition
November 3rd
6:10 pm
736 Phillips Hall
More info . . .

CS Colloquium: Combinatorial Architecture: A Multi-core Processor Running on Regular Sequential Code
November 12th
4:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
More info . . .

GW Institute for Biomedical Engineering Colloquium: Accelerating Medical Device Innovation: The Role of Innovation
November 13th
10:30 – 11:30 am
640 Phillips Hall
More info . . .

CS Colloquium: Top-k Algorithms and Applications
November 16th
12:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
More info . . .

SEAS 125th Anniversary Events

SEAS Seminar Series: Engineering Challenges in the 21st Century: Monday, November 2nd
“Solar Energy,” Presented by Dr. Ken Zweibel, GW Institute for the Analysis of Solar Energy
6:30 pm
404 Marvin Center
More info . . .

Frank Howard Lecture Series–Dr. Frieder Seible, Speaker: Thursday, November 12th
6:00 - 9:00 pm at 1957 E Street N.W., Room 213
Registration required for this event
More info . . .

SEAS Seminar Series: Engineering Challenges in the 21st Century: Monday, November 16th
“Sustainability – Water Quality,” Presented by Prof. Rumana Riffat (CEE)
6:30 pm
310 Marvin Center
More info

SEAS Seminar Series: Engineering Challenges in the 21st Century: Monday, November 30th
“Smaller and Faster: Nanomaterials,” Presented by Prof. Martha Pardavi-Horvath (ECE)
6:30 pm
101 Marvin Center
More info . . .

Frank Howard Lecture Series–Dr. Barbara Liskov, Speaker: Wednesday, December 2nd
6:00 - 9:00 pm at 1957 E Street N.W., City View Room
Registration required for this event
More info . . .

Dissertation Defenses:

Name of Student Defending:  Kai Xing
Title of Dissertation: "Coding-based Channel Assignment in Multi-channel Wireless Networks”
Thursday, December 4th at 10:00 am
736 Phillips Hall

SEAS Career Services Events

Southeast Biomedical Engineering Career Conference: October 30th
Washington D.C. Convention Center
For more information: http://www.Sebecconference.org

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